A Christmas Carol Adaptations Ranked From Worst To Best

Have you ever thought to yourself that A Christmas Carol could use some slapstick animal hijinks to undercut all the Victorian gloom? How about a sleeker, younger Ebeneezer Scrooge who's given a second chance at love? Perhaps a warbly love song performed by Kate Winslet, heavy with hope that you'll see her name and the words "love song" and connect this thin movie to Titanic? No? Well, too bad, because 2001's Christmas Carol: The Movie is stuffing all that and more into 81 minutes of tooth-gritted cheer.

But it's not just the tacked-on frippery that makes this take on Dickens so skippable. The meat of the movie is about as stringy and tasteless as the Cratchits' average supper. Despite the A-list talent and the director's bonafides (at this point, he was best known for apocalyptic fable When the Wind Blows), Christmas Carol: The Movie is remarkably lifeless. The facial animation doesn't ever look quite right, as though every other frame is missing, and the acting is, at best, stiff. The entire operation feels dumbed down, attempting to appeal through gags, songs, and subplots no one of any age has ever needed in attempt to make audiences love the story at the movie's center. Therein lies the 2001 adaptation's fatal flaw. It doesn't trust Dickens, and it doesn't trust its audience.

There was a sliver of time in the 2000s when movies fell in love with surreal, motion-capture-powered computer animation. Robert Zemeckis, fresh from using this technique in The Polar Express and Beowulf, decided to apply it to A Christmas Carol. Led by performances from Jim Carrey as Scrooge and Gary Oldman as Bob Cratchit, the results were ... odd. Some, like Roger Ebert, hailed it as "an exhilarating visual experience." Others, like The Telegraph, considered its distinct look distracting, enforcing distance between the characters and the audience that made it difficult to connect to the story's themes of cruelty and redemption. 

Years later, the movie's reputation remains mixed, and it's not hard to see why. There are certainly strengths to be found within its uncannily animated depths. Carrey's Scrooge is a bit goofier than other renditions, but it fits the ghoulishly funny tone of the movie, and Oldman's Cratchit is pitch-perfect. But the visuals, so dazzling in 2009, look strange to modern eyes, and the tone of the whole affair sits uncomfortably between Carrey's jovial clowning and bleak Dickensian morals. It's a little too dark to be heartwarming and a bit too silly to be austere. There it sits, marooned, the redheaded step-child of both the animated Carols and the live-action ones. Only one thing is truly clear: It's nobody's go-to version when the holiday season rolls around.

Disney has been involved in multiple Christmas Carol adaptations, but this is the only that features the characters most central to the Disney Brand. Mickey, Minnie, and of course, Scrooge McDuck all star in this particular take on the tale. This brings a certain lightness to even the darkest parts of the iconic story. No one heads into a production of A Christmas Carol thinking Scrooge won't end up changing his ways, but there's still something soothing about the bleak first half of the story containing Mickey Mouse. For the youngest watchers, this is an ideal Carol indeed, with only the barest suggestions of real peril and intractable social ills.

Unfortunately, that's the only group this version is meant for. Anyone beyond the preschool years won't find much to love about this take, blunted as it is by Disney's core characters. This isn't to say it isn't sweet to watch beloved figures of childhood like Daisy Duck and Goofy traipse around London, learning the ways of goodwill towards man, but the sheer number of A Christmas Carol adaptations means that no viewer has to settle for mere sweetness. Leave this version in the nursery where it belongs, and move on to something better.

Released in 1971, this isn't the only animated rendition of A Christmas Carol on our list, but it might just be the most visually striking, a quality that netted the production an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. Richard Williams, the animator who masterminded Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Thief and the Cobbler, directed and produced this version in partnership Ken Harris (credited as "Master Animator"), and the pedigree is apparent in every frame. Unlike the outsized visuals of those two storied titles, however, A Christmas Carol is austere, almost dour, which is the result of the crew looking to 19th-century engravings for inspiration. As a result, this version might not be one children respond to, especially given the frequent use of strange pans, zooms, and deliberately odd scene transitions animators threw into the mix. 

Moreover, it's a short piece, only 25 minutes long. Brevity might be the soul of wit, but one can't help but wish the film had a little more room to breathe, if only to explore the possibilities of its unique animation more fully. Still, the end result is a gorgeous half-hour of pure Dickens, as warm-hearted as it is deliberately rough around the edges. One forgets the happy ending when ensconced within the grimy first half of the tale, so it's all the more delightful to rediscover that in the second.

A version of A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart already has a leg up on the competition. Those who associate him with the poised charisma of roles like Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier will automatically see him as a natural Scrooge, while those who are new to his work will be quickly convinced. His steeliness suits the character perfectly, while his comedy chops come into glorious play towards the end, when Scrooge wheezes and chokes his way into the first laugh he's had in years. Stewart is an actor at the height of his powers in this adaptation, as natural rolling his eyes at orphans as he is embracing Tiny Tim. He gives the entire production gravity, and he loans every scene and set piece weight and sophistication with his presence. One watches this take on A Christmas Carol and understands how Stewart's career has, if anything, only grown with age.

The movie around him, in contrast, is merely fine. There's nothing to complain about, really, but beyond Stewart's powerhouse performance, nothing catches the eye. As the central role is so capably filled, that's easily forgiven, but when placed beside other versions of the same story, it's a lot more noticeable. Stewart is talented enough to make the production notable, but in truth, he's the only thing that does. Happily for Dickens and Stewart fans alike, A Christmas Carol is very much Ebenezer Scrooge's story, and, thus, for 95 impeccably acted minutes, it's Patrick Stewart's story as well.

There's no shortage of Christmas Carol adaptations featuring top-class talent, especially in the role of Scrooge. But George C. Scott brings something inimitable to this version — a sheer power that emanates from every frame. His Scrooge is an aging lion, grown feral from injustice and avarice, and the actor's storied turns as Patton and Buck Turgidson are evident in every line reading. That's right. An actor from West Virginia brings something to a role as eminently British as Ebenezer Scrooge that the actual Brits could do well to learn from him.

This is a Scrooge who strides, and whose nastiness stings all the more for the force the man can put behind it. Thus, it's also a Scrooge who feels entirely transformed by the final credits, and accordingly, this is a Scrooge who delivers the moral with renewed vigor. He isn't just changed by his ordeal with the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future, but he's rebuilt as a new man with new purpose. Alongside a cast that brings a certain worn-in quality many Carol adaptations lack — the Cratchits truly seem exhausted by their poverty here, instead of merely waylaid — Scott shines all the brighter, his performance enriching theirs and being enriched in turn. It's not just a great take on a classic story, nor a collection of impressive performances, but, in fact, a holiday treasure all its own.

What makes A Christmas Carol great? There's the satisfaction of seeing a villain confronted with the consequences of his actions. There's the sly sense of humor that peeks out from around the story's most cynical corners. Plus, there's the community spirit that it celebrates and facilitates. But beyond all of that, there's the hope it kindles. A Christmas Carol tells us that it's never too late to be a bigger, better, more benevolent person.

It's this spirit that the 1938 adaptation embodies. From its first scenes — children fleeing in fright of Scrooge's nephew, tainted by association — to its sublime ending, it's a beacon of progress in all its forms. Reginald Owens' Scrooge is a rangy old monster who finds himself falling in love with life again, flush with the fact that it isn't too late for him (or anyone, for that matter). That this film was made in the midst of the Great Depression for a weary public remains clear in its balance of optimism and futility. This is a movie for those all too familiar with Scrooge and his ilk, as Dickens' audience was in its day. This version of A Christmas Carol understands the power of its story like few others, and going on a century since its debut, it still shines like it did the day of its premiere.